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Animal House
National Lampoon's Animal House is a 1978 American comedy film directed by John Landis and written by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller. It stars John Belushi, Peter Riegert, Tim Matheson, John Vernon, Verna Bloom, Thomas Hulce, Stephen Furst, and Donald Sutherland. The film is about a misfit group of fraternity members who challenge the authority of the dean of Faber College. The film was produced by Matty Simmons of National Lampoon and Ivan Reitman for Universal Pictures. It was inspired by stories written by Miller and published in National Lampoon. The stories were based on Ramis's experience in the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis, Miller's Alpha Delta Phi experiences at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and producer Reitman's at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Of the younger lead actors, only the 28-year-old Belushi was an established star, but even he had not yet appeared in a film, having gained fame mainly from his television appearances on Saturday Night Live, which was starting its third season in autumn 1977. Several of the actors who were cast as college students, including Hulce, Karen Allen, and Kevin Bacon, were just beginning their film careers, although Matheson had appeared as one of the vigilante cops in the second Dirty Harry film, Magnum Force, and had voiced the title character in Jonny Quest. Upon its initial release, Animal House received generally mixed reviews from critics, but Time and Roger Ebert proclaimed it one of the year's best. Filmed for only $2.8 million, it garnered an estimated gross of more than $142 million in the form of theatrical rentals and home video, not including merchandising, making it the highest grossing comedy film of its time. The film, along with 1977's The Kentucky Fried Movie, also directed by Landis, was largely responsible for defining and launching the gross out film genre, which became one of Hollywood's staples. As of 2017, it was considered by many fans and critics as one of the greatest comedy films ever made. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed Animal House "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was No. 1 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". It was No. 36 on AFI's "100 Years... 100 Laughs" list of the 100 best American comedies. In 2008, Empire magazine selected it as one of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time." Plot In 1962, Faber College freshmen Lawrence "Larry" Kroger and Kent Dorfman seek to join a fraternity. Finding themselves out of place at the prestigious Omega Theta Pi house's party, they visit the slovenly Delta Tau Chi house next door, where Kent is a "legacy" who cannot be rejected due to his brother Fred having been a member. John "Bluto" Blutarsky welcomes them (claiming they "need the dues"), and they meet other Deltas, including motorcyclist Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day, chapter president Robert Hoover, ladies' man Eric "Otter" Stratton, and Otter's best friend Donald "Boon" Schoenstein, whose girlfriend Katy is constantly pressuring him to stop drinking with the Deltas and do something with his life. Larry and Kent are invited to pledge and given the fraternity names "Pinto" and "Flounder" respectively, by Bluto, Delta's sergeant-at-arms. College Dean Vernon Wormer wants to remove the Deltas, who are already on probation, so he invokes his emergency authority and places the fraternity on "double-secret probation" due to various campus conduct violations and their abysmal academic standing. He directs the clean-cut, smug Omega president Greg Marmalard to find a way for him to remove the Deltas from campus. Various incidents, including the prank-related accidental death of a horse belonging to Omega member and Reserve Officers' Training Corps cadet commander Douglas C. Neidermeyer, and an attempt by Otter to date Marmalard's girlfriend, further increase the Dean's and the Omegas' animosity toward the Deltas. Bluto and D-Day steal the answers to an upcoming test from the trash, not realizing that the Omegas have planted a fake set of answers for them to find. The Deltas fail the exam, and their grade-point averages fall so low that Wormer tells them he needs only one more incident to revoke their charter. To cheer themselves up, the Deltas organize a toga party and bring in Otis Day and the Knights to provide live music. Wormer's wife attends at Otter's invitation and has sex with him. Pinto hooks up with Clorette, a cashier he meets at the supermarket. They make out, but do not have sex because she passes out drunk. Pinto takes her home in a shopping cart and later discovers that she is the mayor's daughter. Outraged by his wife's escapades and the mayor's threat of personal violence, Wormer organizes a kangaroo court and revokes Delta's charter. To take their minds off their troubles, Otter, Boon, Flounder, and Pinto go on a road trip. Otter picks up four young women from Emily Dickinson College as dates for himself and his Delta brothers by posing as the fiancé of a woman at the college who died in a recent kiln explosion. They stop at a roadhouse bar where Day's band is performing, not realizing it has an exclusively African-American clientele. A couple of hulking patrons intimidate the Deltas and they quickly exit, smashing up Flounder's borrowed car in their haste and leaving their dates behind. Marmalard and other Omegas lure Otter to a motel and beat him up, believing that Otter is having an affair with Marmalard's girlfriend, Mandy, not knowing that Mandy's best friend, Babs, actually made up the story because she wants Marmalard for herself. The Deltas' midterm grades are so poor that an ecstatic Wormer expels them all, having already notified their local draft boards that they are now eligible for military service. The news shocks Flounder so badly that he vomits on Wormer. The Deltas are despondent, but Bluto rallies them with an impassioned, if historically inaccurate, speech ("Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"). They decide to get revenge on Wormer, the Omegas, and the college. They convert Flounder's damaged car into an armored vehicle and hide it inside a cake-shaped breakaway float and sneak into the annual homecoming parade. As they wreak havoc on the event, the futures of several of the student main characters are revealed using freeze-frame labels. Most of the Deltas become respectable professionals (with Bluto becoming a senator), while their adversaries suffer less fortunate outcomes. Cast *John Belushi as John "Bluto" Blutarsky *Tim Matheson as Eric "Otter" Stratton *Peter Riegert as Donald "Boon" Schoenstein *Tom Hulce as Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger *Stephen Furst as Kent "Flounder" Dorfman *Bruce McGill as Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day *James Widdoes as Robert Hoover *Douglas Kenney as "Stork" *James Daughton as Gregory "Greg" Marmalard *Mark Metcalf as Douglas C. Neidermeyer *Kevin Bacon as Chip Diller *John Vernon as Dean Vernon Wormer *Verna Bloom as Marion Wormer *Donald Sutherland as Professor Dave Jennings *Karen Allen as Katy *Sarah Holcomb as Clorette DePasto *DeWayne Jessie as Otis Day *Mary Louise Weller as Mandy Pepperidge *Martha Smith as Barbara Sue "Babs" Jansen *Cesare Danova as Mayor Carmine DePasto Production Development Animal House was the first film produced by National Lampoon, the most popular humor magazine on college campuses in the mid-1970s. The periodical specialized in satirizing politics and popular culture. Many of the magazine's writers were recent college graduates, hence its appeal to students all over the country. Doug Kenney was a Lampoon writer and the magazine's first editor-in-chief. He graduated from Harvard University in 1969 and had a college experience closer to the Omegas in the film (he had been president of the university's elite Spee Club). Kenney was responsible for the first appearances of three characters that would appear in the film, Larry Kroger, Mandy Pepperidge, and Vernon Wormer. They made their debut in 1973's National Lampoon's High School Yearbook, a satire of a Middle America 1964 high school yearbook. Kroger's and Pepperidge's characters in the yearbook were effectively the same as their characters in the movie, whereas Vernon Wormer was a P. E. and civics teacher as well as an athletic coach in the yearbook. However, Kenney felt that fellow Lampoon writer Chris Miller was the magazine's expert on the college experience. Faced with an impending deadline, Miller submitted a chapter from his then-abandoned memoirs entitled "The Night of the Seven Fires" about pledging experiences from his fraternity days in Alpha Delta (associated with the national Alpha Delta Phi during Miller's undergraduate years, the fraternity subsequently disassociated itself from the national organization and is now called Alpha Delta) at the Ivy League's Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. The antics of his fellow fraternities, coupled with experiences like that of a road trip to University of Wisconsin-Madison and its Delta Chi Fraternity, became the inspiration for the Delta Tau Chis of Animal House and many characters in the film (and their nicknames) were based on Miller's fraternity brothers. Filmmaker Ivan Reitman had just finished producing David Cronenberg's first film, Shivers, and called the magazine's publisher Matty Simmons about making movies under the Lampoon banner. Reitman had put together The National Lampoon Show in New York City featuring several future Saturday Night Live cast members, including John Belushi. When most of the Lampoon group moved on to SNL except for Harold Ramis, Reitman approached him with an idea to make a film together using some skits from the Lampoon Show. Screenplay Kenney met Lampoon writer Ramis at the suggestion of Simmons. Ramis drew from his own fraternity experiences as a member of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis and was working on a film treatment about college called "Freshman Year", but the magazine's editors were not happy with it. Kenney and Ramis started working on a new film treatment together, positing Charles Manson in a high school, calling it Laser Orgy Girls. Simmons was cool to this idea so they changed the setting to a "northeastern college ... Ivy League kind of school". Kenney was a fan of Miller's fraternity stories and suggested using them as a basis for a movie. Kenney, Miller and Ramis began brainstorming ideas. They saw the film's 1962 setting as "the last innocent year ... of America", and the homecoming parade that ends the film as occurring on November 21, 1963, the day before President Kennedy's assassination. They agreed that Belushi should star in it and Ramis wrote the part of Bluto specifically for the comedian, having been friends with him while at Chicago's The Second City. The writers were new to screenwriting, so their film treatment ran to 110-pages; the average was 15 pages. Reitman and Simmons pitched it to various Hollywood studios. Simmons met with Ned Tanen, an executive at Universal Studios. He was encouraged by younger executives Sean Daniel and Thom Mount who were more receptive to the Lampoon type of humor; Mount had discovered the "Seven Fires" film treatment as Tanen's assistant, while investigating projects left by a fired studio executive. Tanen hated the idea. Ramis remembers, "We went further than I think Universal expected or wanted. I think they were shocked and appalled. Chris' fraternity had virtually been a vomiting cult. And we had a lot of scenes that were almost orgies of vomit ... We didn't back off anything". As the writers created more drafts of the screenplay (nine in total), the studio gradually became more receptive to the project, especially Mount, who championed it. The studio green-lighted the film and set the budget at a modest $3 million. Simmons remembers, "They just figured, 'Screw it, it's a silly little movie, and we'll make a couple of bucks if we're lucky—let them do whatever they want.'" Casting Initially, Reitman had wanted to direct but had made only one film, Cannibal Girls, for $5,000. The film's producers approached Richard Lester and Bob Rafelson before considering John Landis, who got the director job based on his work on The Kentucky Fried Movie. That film's script and continuity supervisor was the girlfriend of Sean Daniel, an assistant to Mount. Daniel saw Landis' movie and recommended him. Landis then met with Mount, Reitman and Simmons and got the job. Landis remembers, "When I was given the script, it was the funniest thing I had ever read up to that time. But it was really offensive. There was a great deal of projectile vomiting and rape and all these things". Landis claims his big contribution to the film was that there "had to be good guys and bad guys. There can’t just be bad guys, so there became a good fraternity and bad fraternity". There was also friction between Landis and the writers early on because Landis was a high-school dropout from Hollywood and they were college graduates from the East Coast. Ramis remembers, "He sort of referred immediately to Animal House as 'my movie.' We'd been living with it for two years and we hated that". According to Landis, he drew inspiration from classic Hollywood comedies featuring the likes of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and the Marx Brothers. The initial cast was to feature Chevy Chase as Otter, Bill Murray as Boon, Brian Doyle-Murray as Hoover, Dan Aykroyd as D-Day, and John Belushi as Bluto, but only Belushi was interested. Chase turned the film down to do Foul Play; Landis, who wanted to cast unknown dramatic actors such as Bacon and Allen (the first film for both) instead of famous comedians, takes credit for subtly discouraging Chase by describing the cast as an "ensemble". Landis has also stated that he was not interested in directing a "Saturday Night Live movie" and that unknowns would be the better choice. The character of D-Day was based on Aykroyd, who was a motorcycle aficionado. Aykroyd was offered the part, but he was already committed to Saturday Night Live. Belushi, who had worked on The National Lampoon Radio Hour before Saturday Night Live, was also committed to SNL, but spent Monday through Wednesday making the film and then flying back to New York to do the show on Thursday through Saturday. Ramis originally wrote the role of Boon for himself, but Landis felt that he looked too old for the part and Riegert was cast instead. Landis did offer Ramis a smaller part, but he declined. Landis met with Jack Webb to play Dean Wormer and Kim Novak to play his wife. Webb reportedly turned down the role because of concerns over his clean-cut image, but later said he didn't find the script funny; he was replaced by John Vernon who Landis cast after seeing him in The Outlaw Josey Wales. Belushi initially received only $35,000 for Animal House, but was paid a bonus after the film became a hit. Landis also met with Meat Loaf in case Belushi turned down the role of Bluto. Landis worked with Belushi on his character, who "hardly had any dialogue"; they decided that Bluto was a cross between Harpo Marx and the Cookie Monster. Belushi said he developed his ability to communicate without talking because his grandmother spoke little English. Belushi was considered a supporting actor and Universal wanted another star. Landis had been a crew member on Kelly's Heroes and had become friends with actor Donald Sutherland, sometimes babysitting his son Kiefer. Landis asked Sutherland, one of the biggest stars of the early 1970s, to be in the film. For two days of work, Sutherland declined the initial offer of $20,000 plus "points" (a percentage of the gross or net income). Universal then offered him his day rate of $25,000 or 2% of the film's gross. Sutherland took the guaranteed fee, assuming that the film would not be very successful; although this made him the highest-paid member of the cast (Neidemeyer's horse, Junior, and John Belushi each received $40,000), the decision cost Sutherland what he estimates as around $14 million. The star's participation, however, was crucial; Landis later said "It was Donald Sutherland who essentially got the film made." "Pinto" was screenwriter Chris Miller's nickname at his Dartmouth fraternity. DeWayne Jessie adopted the "Otis Day" name in his private life and continued touring with the band. Principal photography Filming commenced in the autumn of 1977, and Landis brought the actors who played the Deltas up five days early in order to bond. Staying at the Rodeway Inn motel in adjacent Springfield, they moved an old piano from the lobby into McGill's room, which became known as "party central." James Widdoes ("Hoover") remembers, "It was like freshman orientation. There was a lot of getting to know each other and calling each other by our character names." This tactic encouraged the actors playing the Deltas to separate themselves from the actors playing the Omegas, helping generate authentic animosity between them on camera. Belushi and his wife Judy rented a house in south Eugene in order to keep him away from alcohol and drugs; she remained in Oregon while he commuted to New York City for Saturday Night Live. Although the cast members were warned against mixing with the college students, one night, some girls invited several of the cast members to a fraternity party. They arrived assuming they had been invited and were greeted with open hostility. As they were leaving, Widdoes threw a cup of beer at a group of drunk football players and a fight "like a scene from the movie" broke out. Tim Matheson, Bruce McGill, Peter Riegert, and Widdoes narrowly escaped, with McGill suffering a black eye and Widdoes getting several teeth knocked out. Other than Belushi's opening yell, the food fight was filmed in one shot, with the actors encouraged to fight for real. Flounder's groceries handling in the supermarket was another single shot; Furst deftly caught the many items Landis and Matheson threw at him, amazing the director. By filming the long courtroom scene in one day Landis won a bet with Reitman. The film's budget was so small that during the 32 days of shooting in Eugene, mostly in November, Landis had no trailer or office and could not watch dailies for three weeks. His wife Deborah Nadoolman purchased most of the costumes at local thrift stores, and she and Judy Belushi made the party togas. Landis and Bruce McGill staged a scene for reporters visiting the set where the director pretended to be angry at the actor for being difficult on the set. Landis grabbed a breakaway pitcher and smashed it over McGill's head. He fell to the ground and pretended to be unconscious. The reporters were completely fooled, and when Landis asked McGill to get up, he refused to move. Black extras had to be bused in from Portland for the segment at the Dexter Lake Club due to their scarcity around Eugene. More seriously, the segment alarmed Tanen and other studio executives, who perceived it as racist and warned that "'black people in America are going to rip the seats out of theaters if you leave that scene in the movie.'" Richard Pryor's approval helped retain the segment in the film. The studio became more enthusiastic about the film when Reitman showed executives and sales managers of various regions in the country a 10-minute production reel that was put together in two days. The reaction was positive and the studio sent 20 copies out to exhibitors. The first preview screening for Animal House was held in Denver four months before it opened nationwide. The crowd loved it and the filmmakers realized they had a potential hit on their hands. Soundtrack and score The soundtrack is a mix of rock and roll and rhythm and blues with the original score created by film composer Elmer Bernstein, who had been a Landis family friend since John Landis was a child. Bernstein was easily persuaded to score the film, but was not sure what to make of it. Similar to his preferring dramatic actors for the comedy, Landis asked Bernstein to score it as though it were serious. He adapted the "Faber College Theme" from the Academic Festival Overture by Brahms, and said that the film opened yet another door in his diverse career, to scoring comedies. The soundtrack was released as a vinyl album in 1978, and then as a CD in 1998. In the late 2000s, the very first song on the soundtrack, the "Faber College Theme", came to prominence due to its purported resemblance to the Bosnian national anthem. Reception In its opening weekend, Animal House grossed $276,538 in 12 theaters. It grossed $120.1 million in North America and went on to achieve a domestic lifetime gross of $141.6 million. It was the highest grossing comedy of all time until the release of Ghostbusters (which was also written by Ramis) and the seventh highest grossing film of the 1970s. Adjusted for inflation, it is the 67th highest grossing film in North America. Critical response At the time of its release, Animal House received mixed reviews from critics but several immediately recognized its appeal, and it has since been recognized as one of the best films of 1978. The film holds a 91% positive rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Its consensus states "The talents of director John Landis and Saturday Night Live's irrepressible John Belushi conspired to create a rambunctious, subversive college comedy that continues to resonate." Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and wrote, "It's anarchic, messy, and filled with energy. It assaults us. Part of the movie's impact comes from its sheer level of manic energy. ... But the movie's better made (and better acted) than we might at first realize. It takes skill to create this sort of comic pitch, and the movie's filled with characters that are sketched a little more absorbingly than they had to be, and acted with perception". Ebert later placed the film on his 10 best list of 1978, the only National Lampoon film to have received this honor. In his review for Time, Frank Rich wrote, "At its best it perfectly expresses the fears and loathings of kids who came of age in the late '60s; at its worst Animal House revels in abject silliness. The hilarious highs easily compensate for the puerile lows". Gary Arnold wrote in his review for The Washington Post, "Belushi also controls a wicked array of conspiratorial expressions with the audience. ... He can seem irresistibly funny in repose or invest minor slapstick opportunities with a streak of genius". David Ansen wrote in Newsweek, "But if Animal House lacks the inspired tastelessness of the Lampoon's High School Yearbook Parody, this is still low humor of a high order". Robert Martin wrote in The Globe and Mail, "It is so gross and tasteless you feel you should be disgusted but it's hard to be offended by something that is so sidesplittingly funny". Time magazine proclaimed Animal House one of the year's best. When the film was released, Landis, Widdoes and Allen went on a national promotional tour. Universal Pictures spent about $4.5 million promoting the film at selected college campuses and helped students organize their own toga parties. One such party at the University of Maryland attracted some 2,000 people, while students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison tried for a crowd of 10,000 people and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Thanks to the film, toga parties became one of the favorite college campus happenings during 1978 and 1979. In 2000, the American Film Institute placed the film on its 100 Years...100 Laughs list, where it was ranked #36. Then in 2005, AFI ranked John "Bluto" Blutarsky's quote "Toga! Toga!" at #82 on its list of 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes, with the quotes "Over? Did you say "over?" Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!" and "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son" being nominated. Category:Films Category:Universal Pictures films Category:1970s Category:1978 Category:Animal House Category:R-rated films Category:Live-action films